Funeral, 1895: A Brookhaven Poem

She nestles there, suffering,

folded into herself,

until she is not. Helpless,

I watch her, disappearing

a little each day, and then

in the deafening silence

I can hear someone 

screaming in the light.

 

Our daughters, so much

like her, guide me through

the motions – arrangements,

the pastor, the funeral home,

the service, the burial, words

read to the sound of dirt

striking wood, the single rose

someone left soon covered.

 

The rose is white

in the afternoon light.

 

At the house, after, the smell

of coffee and iced cakes, 

church ladies hovering 

in long skirts and starched

white collared blouses, 

pouring into cups and 

cutting slices as muted sounds

of voices pass around me.

Our daughters anchor me 

in line, one on each side,

smiling to the people

in soft, nodding gratitude.

Through the windows I see

the afternoon light.

 

People leave. Our daughters

insist I rest, laying me

in our bed, the place where

she left me. The door closes; I

hear their steps on the stairs.

I don’t sleep; I turn on my side

and reach to touch what

is now emptiness suffused 

with light.

 

It is morning, early, dark still.

I make my way to the kitchen

and then the street, its houses 

posing as tombstones. 

I walk in the dark to the woods,

our woods, the place we

remembered as the afterword

of war. I walk miles perhaps, but

by time the light opens, 

I am buried deep in the green 

and the smell of dense pine,

embracing the solitude 

of separation.

 

We were bonded forever

by the road after the war,

the road we traveled

together, two children 

grown too old too soon,

traveling as one in the light.

No one knew us like

we knew each other.

No one ever could,

except the light.

 

Years later, when I was old,

I would hear that grief

is a thing with feathers. 

I knew that was wrong.

I would know grief, yes,

but only as a thing with tethers,

tethers bathed in light.

 

Photograph by Dewang Gupta via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

The Origin Story of Simply Murder: The Battle of Fredericksburg – Chris Mackowski at Emerging Civil War.

 

Why Lenin Won – Gaul Saul Morson at Law & Liberty.